Passage quizzes: literal, inference and vocabulary questions, and how ours are built

1 Three kinds of question

Sorting your questions by kind is the quickest way to see what a quiz really checks. A quiz of only literal questions tells you who can find facts. It doesn't tell you who understood.

Literal: in the text

The answer is stated in the passage, often in one sentence. In the 4th-grade story The Lemonade Stand, "What did Dana paint on the sign?" is literal: the answer, bright yellow letters, is on the page. Literal questions check careful reading and are the right place to start with young or struggling readers.

Inference: think about it

The answer is not written down; the reader works it out from clues. In the same story, "What does the new sign tell you about what the girls learned?" asks the reader to connect the ending to what came before. In the 2nd-grade text A Seed Grows, "How does the bean plant make more bean plants?" asks the reader to link steps from different parts of the text.

Vocabulary: this word, here

The question asks what a word means in the passage. "What does shelter mean in the passage?" is better than "What does shelter mean?", because the passage decides which meaning counts. On the passage page each question is tagged in the text or think about it, so students learn the difference too.

2 How the passages and their questions are built

Every passage on the reading passages pages is an original text written for Peabody Teach, and each one is stored with the same parts:

• The text, in short paragraphs, fiction or nonfiction, with a topic.
• Five to eight questions, each with a full answer and marked as literal or inference.
• Four to six vocabulary words, each with a meaning written for a child.

There are 53 passages: five in kindergarten, six each in 1st and 2nd grade, seven each in 3rd to 5th, and five each in 6th to 8th. Between them they hold 307 questions (219 literal and 88 inference) and 255 vocabulary words. Every passage has at least one inference question. In kindergarten and 1st grade it is exactly one; from 2nd grade on, passages have one to three, and one 8th-grade passage has four.

Length and difficulty rise with the grade. Kindergarten passages run from 36 to 48 words, 4th-grade passages from 165 to 216, and 8th-grade passages from 258 to 343. Each passage is checked by an automatic test against a Flesch-Kincaid range for its grade, the grade-level formula the readability checker also reports, so a 3rd-grade passage can't quietly drift up to 6th-grade sentences.

When you choose a passage in the quiz maker, it takes the passage's own questions, then adds one question for each vocabulary word in the form "What does word mean in the passage?". So a passage with five questions and four words gives a nine-question bank.

3 Where the wrong answers come from

The quiz maker's default layout is three boxes: the right answer and two wrong ones. Passage questions don't come with wrong answers written for them, so the maker borrows. For each question it first takes answers to the other questions of the same kind in the same passage, and only then any other answer from the passage.

That has a useful side effect. The wrong boxes are not silly. They are true things from the same text that answer a different question. For "Why was business slow at first?", a wrong box might be "Bright yellow letters", the answer to another question. A student who reads the question carelessly and grabs any fact they remember will be caught; a student who matches the answer to the question will not.

It also has limits worth knowing:

• Sometimes a wrong box is easy to rule out because it is plainly about something else. That makes some three-box questions easier than the same question written as short answer.
• Vocabulary questions borrow from the other word meanings in the passage, which are all real definitions. That is a fair test of whether the student knows which one fits.
• If the maker can't find two different wrong answers, that question prints with a line to write on instead, and a note above the quiz tells you.

4 Choosing a layout for each kind

The maker prints any passage in four layouts. Each suits a different kind of question.

• Three boxes: ten to a page, quick to mark, and best for literal and vocabulary questions. Turn on the bubble sheet for a separate answer page.
• Short answer: six to a page with three writing lines each. This is the right layout for inference, where the reasoning is the point. The key prints the full model answer for each question.
• Fill the blank: fifteen to a page with one line each. Works for literal questions with one-word or short answers.
• Exit ticket: three questions per ticket. Passage answers are often long sentences, so these tickets print two to a page as half sheets.

Grades 6 to 8 open the maker on their own first passage, ten questions, three boxes. For those grades, consider switching to short answer for at least one quiz a week; a short written answer with a reason shows far more than a circled letter.

Versions A and B print the same questions in a different order with the boxes moved. The passage page itself also prints: Print student copy gives the text with questions, and Print with answers adds the key for you.

5 Passage questions by grade band

K–2

Read the passage aloud first, then together. Ask the questions out loud and take spoken answers; a written quiz comes later in the year. For a check, print five three-box questions and read each one aloud while children circle. The single inference question at the end is where you teach the habit of saying why: "How do you know?"

3–5

Ask students to read twice, once for the main idea and once to find the sentence that proves each answer. Mark the proof sentence with the question number. Mix layouts: three boxes for the literal questions on Monday, short answer for the inference ones on Thursday.

6–8

Older readers should separate what the text says from what they conclude. Have students label each of their answers as stated or inferred and quote the words that support it. The vocabulary questions are good warm-ups, and at these grades the meaning in context often differs from the first meaning a dictionary gives.

At every grade, keep one rule: an answer to an inference question needs a reason from the text. "Because I think so" is not yet an answer.

6 Writing your own passage questions

You can quiz any text you teach, from a science chapter to a class novel, by writing your own questions and pasting them under My list in the quiz maker, one a line, as question: answer. The maker builds wrong boxes from your other answers the same way it does for our passages.

• Write the literal questions first, one for each paragraph that matters.
• Add one or two inference questions whose answer needs two parts of the text.
• Pick three or four words that carry the meaning and ask what each means in the passage.
• Write the full answer for each, not a single word, so you know exactly what you are looking for.
• Keep answers to similar questions about the same length, so no box stands out.
• Avoid questions a student could answer without reading.
• Don't type students' names or anything about a student; the list stays in your browser, and it doesn't need any.

A quick test of an inference question: cover the text and ask whether any single sentence answers it. If one does, it is a literal question in disguise. A quick test of a literal question: could two careful readers give different answers? If so, the question is unclear, not hard.

7 What to do with the results

Mark the quiz by kind, not only in total. A student with every literal question right and every inference question wrong needs something different from a student with the opposite pattern.

• Missed literal questions: reading accuracy or attention. Reread together and have the student put a finger on the answer sentence before writing.
• Missed inference questions: model your thinking aloud. "The text says this, and this, so I think…" Then let partners try the next one together.
• Missed vocabulary questions: teach the words before the next passage, using the child-friendly meanings stored with it.
• Missed everything: the passage may be too hard. Try the same topic one grade lower, or read it aloud and quiz again.

The reading fluency timer helps when you suspect slow reading is behind the misses, and the reading level finder suggests a band to try. The point of every quiz is the next lesson, so read the papers the same day and plan from what they show.

Keep a simple tally on a sticky note or in your own grade book: for each student, the literal score and the inference score side by side. After three or four passages a pattern shows, and you can group students by what they need rather than by one overall number. Nothing about this needs to go into an online tool.